[ANPPOM-Lista] Aljazeera: Baile ban? Adults fear Brazilian child stars getting too funky

[Carlos Palombini]

 Youth music style from slums of Rio de Janeiro comes under fire for
excessively sexualizing and commercializing children
June 27, 2015 5:00AM ET
by Donna Bowater
<http://america.aljazeera.com/profiles/b/donna-bowater.html> & Priscilla
Moraes <http://america.aljazeera.com/profiles/m/priscilla-moraes.html>

RIO DE JANEIRO — Jonathan Costa was just 7 years old when the youth
courts barred him from performing a form of the popular Brazilian musical
style funk
<https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/music-brazilian-baile-funk/id1229> in
Rio de Janeiro.

Thrown into his simple schoolboy hit about flying kites and playing soccer
on weekends were references to “picking up chicks with big butts” *(“eu já
vou pegar, um filé com popozão”),* which a judge deemed inappropriate.

The son of Rio funk royalty, Costa was considered the first MC *mirim,* or
junior MC, when he started recording funk in 1999. Looking back, Costa
— now 21 and a father of one — said it revealed double standards in
Brazil. “If I was barred from singing the phrase ‘chick with a big butt,’
we should ban Carnival,” he said, “because Carnival is available for all
kinds of children, of all ages, and Carnival has a lot of nudity, many
women with big butts.”
[image: Costa]
Funk DJs, MCs and others generate about $720 million a month in
revenue.Priscilla
Moraes

A recent trend of more provocative child *funkeiros* has once again
put Brazil’s
culture of funk
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/brazilian-funk-music-rio-_n_2324231.html>
under scrutiny and, with it, a legal and social tangle regarding child
protection and freedom of expression. Child performers of both sexes have
run afoul of the law for their explicitly sexual lyrics, provoking a fierce
debate over sexual and commercial
<http://theculturetrip.com/south-america/brazil/articles/favela-funk-brazil-s-booming-street-music-scene/>
 exploitation.

In April public prosecutors in São Paulo launched an investigation into
several junior MCs, including MC Melody, an 8-year-old schoolgirl
<http://www.latina.com/lifestyle/news/young-brazilian-singer-mc-melody-controversy>
whose lyrics include “To all the haters, here’s my reply, if you’re ugly or
pretty, it’s fucking good to be tasty” *(“Para todas as recalcada / Aqui
vai minha resposta / Se é bonito, ou se é feio / Mas é foda ser gostosa”).*

Styled on racy pop-funk singer Anitta
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/andersonantunes/2013/08/30/could-brazils-latest-music-sensation-anitta-be-a-global-superstar-in-the-making/>,
MC Melody has amassed 500,000 fans on Facebook
<https://www.facebook.com/mcmelody.com.br>, where photographs showed her in
suggestive poses and clothing, promoted by her father, MC Belinho
<http://extra.globo.com/noticias/brasil/mc-melody-de-8-anos-causa-polemica-pai-defende-so-porque-ela-canta-funk-15737518.html>
.

A number of boy MCs have made professional videos in which they grind with
adult women, including 13-year-old MC Brinquedo
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Ve0gc72qg>, whose lyrics are very
sexually explicit. MC Pedrinho <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiPcl01Xjrk>,
13, was recently barred from performing anywhere in Brazil, because of his
lyrics, including ones about sleeping with sex workers; if he violates the
order, he faces a fine of 50,000 Brazilian reals (about $16,100).

“They are children and adolescents singing and performing inappropriate
choreography for their age groups, especially the strong erotic content and
sex appeal,” said Eduardo Dias de Souza Ferreira, a public prosecutor in
São Paulo. “The practice conveyed in these videos and lyrics exacerbate
sexuality and make all the efforts of policies and programs against STDs,
AIDS and teenage pregnancy look like a joke.”

Prosecutors said they are investigating KL Produções, which was behind
several other junior MCs, for promoting children singing derogatory lyrics.
Neither KL Produções nor MC Belinho could be reached for comment. MC Melody
has since started performing children’s pop instead of funk.

Born in the favelas, funk, with its throbbing *boom-cha-cha,
boom-boom-cha,* has
been a signature sound of Rio music and culture since the 1980s. Using
a repetitive
drumbeat known as *tamborzão* <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvZhwcFJ_aw>
*,* artists began recording explicit favela anthems and achieving
mainstream success with a light, or censored, version for mass consumption
<http://theculturetrip.com/south-america/brazil/articles/favela-funk-brazil-s-booming-street-music-scene/>
.

Among the subgenres are *proibidão,* or prohibited funk
<http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/07/05/forbidden-funk-music-censorship-in-brazil-doesnt-want-you-to-be-listening-to-censorship/>,
which deals with drug crime and violence, and *putaria,* or slutty funk
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FBUgu2Vg7E>, reflecting the sexual
freedom of Rio’s funk parties known as *baile funk*
<http://www.amazon.com/Rio-Baile-Funk-Favela-Booty/dp/B00082ZSSE>*.*

Some argued that the music developed as an expression of the realities of
life in the city’s poor, violent and socially deprived favelas, which often
fell under the rule of drug gangs or militias.

“I would say prohibited funk emerged as a cry for help, not a cry of
encouragement,” said Costa. “It’s telling the daily life of the community,
reporting where the political system doesn’t enter, where the police don’t
go up, where there isn’t a good public hospital.”

But as police presence increased in many of Rio’s biggest favelas,
*proibidão* was often replaced with *ostentação,* or bling funk
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm5XfyQlSDQ>, with lyrics focusing on
possessions and money. The turnaround of successful artists was rapid,
spreading faster, thanks to social media.

Alex Cutler, 33, who began performing funk as Don Blanquito
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/world/americas/don-blanquito-funk-star-and-rios-bravest-gringo.html>
after moving to Rio from Los Angeles eight years ago, said the culture of
funk had changed. “It’s the music that no one can sit still to. I don’t
think it just has to do with the favela anymore,” he said. Funk was
once “the cry of the favela,” he said, but it developed some negative
aspects, including the economic exploitation of children by adults.

“These kids who are 8 years old — someone is behind them and trying to make
money off them, for the most part,” he said. “I think it’s totally
ridiculous. You’re killing a childhood. And most of the time, the message
the kids are sending isn’t positive for kids their age. These young kids
are talking about gold chains and cars, but they don’t know anything about
that. If you have someone smart behind it and you’re able to capitalize on
it, then I’m not against it. But it takes away from the purity of being a
child.”
[image: Don Blanquito]
The genre’s appeal has spread far to the north. Funk singer and composer
Alex Cutler, aka Don Blanquito, has made a name for himself on the scene in
Rio after arriving from Los Angeles.Courtesy Don Blanquito

Yet there are those who suggest the recent outcry over junior MCs is an
overreaction from a hypocritically conservative country currently
considering whether to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 16.

Writing after the public prosecutor launched its investigation into MC
Melody and others, Adriana Facina, a social anthropologist at the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro, said, “One of the great merits of funk as art
and a cultural manifestation is to bring these contradictions that no one
wants to see and that our society prefers to face by supporting a reduction
in the age of criminal responsibility. A child dancing sensually is
something looked at in horror, but minors sent to abject and inhumane
Brazilian prisons is accepted.”

Carlos Palombini, a musicology professor from the Federal University of
Minas Gerais and an expert in funk, said it was complex social terrain that
the child stars were emerging from, in which sexuality and commercialism
were clashing in notoriously deprived areas. “The question is that some
children are more subject than others to exposition of the language of
adult sexuality as omnipresent in TV commercials and even in children
programs — that these children [then] are forced to mature precociously
because of the social conditions they are subject to and, more importantly,
that their parents have found that the use of such language by their
children in music is a way to commercial success,” he said.

He said he did not find the trend of junior MCs worrying, adding, “I am
inclined to think it’s always legitimate, since I have not yet come across
one case in which such fuss would appear justifiable. There are much more
serious matters to which the public prosecutor remains indifferent.”

At FM o Dia, the radio station with Rio’s largest audience
<http://www.fmodia.com.br/> and where Costa hosts a popular slot for his
family’s record label, the former Prince of Funk has a different
perspective.

He admits that as a producer, he tries to “polish” some of the graphic
content. “Today, I am totally against the kind of music some MCs sing,” he
said. “Funk is a musical sector like any other, in which there are good
things and there are also failures.”

“So we can’t generalize and say that we are seeing a new generation,” he
continued. “This generation already exists. It’s just that we don’t work
with it and we won’t work with it. We will work with the guys that want to
improve, who want to take funk forward, who want to bring a good energy.
We’ll work with this public.”

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/6/27/adults-fear-brazilian-teens-getting-too-funky.html
-- 
carlos palombini
ph.d. dunelm
professor de musicologia ufmg
professor colaborador ppgm-unirio
ufmg.academia.edu/CarlosPalombini <http://goo.gl/KMV98I>
www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Palombini2
scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=YLmXN7AAAAAJ
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